Thursday, November 7, 2013

Snowblind by Christopher Golden

Description from Netgalley

'Snowblind is instantly involving and deeply scary. It will bring a blizzard to your bones. This ones the real deal. And watch out for the last page. It's a killer!' Stephen King

SNOWBLIND is a thrilling
contemporary ghost story with both horror and heart. The small New
England town of Coventry is haunted by its memories of a deadly winter…
in which loved ones were lost, families torn apart, and a town buried
in a terrible blizzard. Now, twelve years later, the people plagued by
their memories of that storm are haunted once again as a new storm
approaches, promising to wreak new havoc. Old ghosts trickle back, and
this storm will prove even more terrifying and deadly than the
last. With richly textured characters, scarred and haunted by the
ghosts of those they loved most, Snowblind reinvents the ghost
story for today’s world. Spellbinding in scope and rooted deeply in
classic storytelling, Christopher Golden has written a chilling
masterpiece that is the best work of his career and a standout
supernatural thriller.

This was a good ghost/horror story. Unique storyline with vivid descriptions of the 'monsters' and snowstorms that make you want to bundle up. It's also a second chance story. Second chances to make amends with lost loved ones, to make the right decisions, for love to win out. Set in Massachusetts.
The main characters are Joe Keenan the local cop, haunted by the loss of two teenagers during the first storm and Jake Shapiro, the older brother of Isaac who was 'taken' during the first storm right in front of Jake's eyes. A couple, T.J. and Ella Farrelly, Ella is the local restaurant, The Vault. T.J.'s mother disappeared in the first storm and he and Ell's daughter Grace was conceived that night. And Doug Manning, a mechanic at the local garage and the town screw-up. Now it's 12 years later and another fierce storm is on it's way. Many things will happen this night besides snow covered roads and power outages. Who will live and who will die?

Opening lines:
'Ella Santos stood on the sidewalk with a cigarette in her hand, watching the snow fall and feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. The storm seemed to loom around her, holding its breath and waiting for her to go back inside. For a couple of impossible long minutes, no cars or plows appeared on the street. The bank and the boutique and the music store and the other restaurants on that stretch of Washington Street had all been closed up for hours, windows dark and abandoned. The city of Coventry had given itself over to the storm, and suddenly Ella felt foolish that she hadn't already gone home and crawled into bed with a mug of tea and an old movie.
She took a long drag on her cigarette and huddled deeper inside her down jacket before exhaling the smoke from her lungs. The only sound was the snow itself, falling so hard and fast that she could hear the strange shush of it accumulating. Ella shivered, and not entirely from the cold. alone on the street, she might have been the last woman on Earth,the only human voice remaining but afraid to interrupt the quiet conversation between now and sky.'

Just a tease:
'His gaze had shifted. Isaac saw that Jake wasn't looking at him anymore but staring past him, at the window, and the terror blooming on his face made Isaac spin toward the window just in time to see the blue-white figures rushing through the storm, long arms reaching forward, long fingers and hands and forearms sliding through the screen as if it weren't there at all, sifting through in a spray of ice crystals and shadows.
Frozen fingers clutched at him, cut his skin, turned his bones to rigid ice, and then they pulled.'

It's not out anywhere until January, Cath. I read an ARC digital copy from netgalley. They have it in the UK too and you might benefit from it if you read ebooks at all. It's free. You request books so you only have as many as you want at anytime and if you review them great and if you don't okay too. Check it out.